Reading ROADSIDE PICNIC
“If ants in an ant hill detect a 10-lane superhighway being built near them, would they understand how to communicate with the workers? Would they assume that the workers communicate only on ant frequencies? In fact, the ants are so primitive that they would not even understand what a 10-lane superhighway was. “
Stills from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker (screenplay written by Strugatsky brothers) which is loosely based on Roadside Picnic.
Roadside Picnic, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 science fiction novel, describes a location called the Zone littered with various artifacts left behind by extraterrestrial visitors who simply came and went without contacting humanity. Redrick Schuhart is a stalker - someone who ventures into the dangerous Zone to retrieve artifacts to sell. The novel follows Red from age 23 to age 31 detailing the effects the Zone has had on him, his family and the people of Harmont, the once-quiet North American town that is now the location of the most important discovery in human history.
Except it doesn’t really seem all that important.
Twenty years after the visit, still not much is known about the aliens - who they were, why they visited, and why they failed to communicate. Instead, humans have carried on fighting and scheming in pursuit of money. The people of Harmont are simply surviving, mostly ignorant of the philosophical implications of the visit.
Ursula K. Le Guin writes in the foreword that Roadside Picnic is first and foremost a story about Red’s destiny. Within this human story, though, the Strugatsky brothers include some fascinating observations on the nature of humanity, our place in the cosmos and our collective future. This commentary occurs about halfway through the book, in a conversation between supplier Richard Noonan and scientist Dr. Valentine Pillman who ponder the philosophical meaning behind the alien visitation:
What was the purpose of the Visit?
Has the Visit changed humanity?
What does the Visit mean?
Below, we’ll reflect on how the novel addresses these questions.
SUMMARY
Prologue: Dr. Valentine Pillman explains that six Zones lay on a smooth curve, demonstrating that the locations were not random. Asked his opinion on the most important discovery since the Visit, he simply says the fact that it happened, that we know we aren’t alone, is important enough.
“The fact of the visit itself is not only the most important discovery of the last thirteen years, it’s the most important discovery in human history. It doesn’t matter who these aliens were. Doesn’t matter where they came from, why they came, why they left so quickly or where they’ve vanished to since. What matters is that we now know for sure: humanity is not alone in the universe.” - pg. XX
Part 1: Red, 23, works for the International Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures. He offers to help his friend and boss Kirill find a ‘full empty’ in the Zone. Red, Kirill and another worker venture through the Zone by tossing nuts and bolts along the path to make sure the way is clear of danger - one wrong move could cost them their lives. Red neglects to warn Kirill to stay away from an odd cobweb in a garage but Kirill unknowingly touches it. Later Red learns that Kirill died and knows it’s his fault. Red’s girlfriend Gunta tells him that she is pregnant.
“Our little town is a hole. Always was and always will be. Except right now…it’s a hole into the future. And the stuff we fish out of this hole will change our whole stinking world. Life will be different, the way it should be, and no one will want for anything. That’s our hole for you. There’s knowledge pouring through this hole. And when we figure it out, we’ll make everyone rich, and we’ll fly to the stars, and we’ll go wherever we want. That’s the kind of hole we have here.” - pg. 42
Part 2: Red, 28, and Burbridge, another stalker, travel into the Zone where Burbridge loses his legs to hell slime. Burbridge promises to give Red a map to the location of the Golden Sphere if Red helps him out of the Zone. The Golden Sphere is said to grant wishes. Red returns Burbridge to his home. Burbridge’s daughter Dina is angry with Red for saving her father. Red’s daughter, nicknamed the Monkey, is normal except for long body hair and black eyes. Red meets with the men who hired him to retrieve objects from the Zone. They ask if he can get them hell slime, presumably for military research. Red is arrested but escapes and sells the hell slime to provide money for his family before turning himself in.
“He had never experienced anything like this before outside the Zone. And it had happened in the Zone only two or three times. It was as though he were in a different world. A million odors cascaded in on him at once—sharp, sweet, metallic, gentle, dangerous ones, as crude as cobblestones, as delicate and complex as watch mechanisms, as huge as a house and as tiny as a dust particle. The air became hard, it developed edges, surfaces, and corners, like space was filled with huge, stiff balloons, slippery pyramids, gigantic prickly crystals, and he had to push his way through it all, making his way in a dream through a junk store stuffed with ancient ugly furniture … It lasted a second. He opened his eyes, and everything was gone. It hadn't been a different world—it was this world turning a new, unknown side to him. This side was revealed to him for a second and then disappeared, before he had time to figure it out.” - pg. 83
Part 3: Richard Noonan, 51, is an Institute supplier also working for a secret organization which attempts to stop stalkers from bringing artifacts out of the Zone. Noonan realizes that Burbridge’s tourist trips to the Zone are a cover for stalkers. Noonan has lunch and drinks with Dr. Valentine Pillman and they discuss the philosophical implications of the visit. Noonan meets with Red, now out of prison. The Monkey is barely human anymore and Red’s deceased father has returned home from the grave. Red seems to accept this new life.
“Mankind’s most impressive achievement is that it has survived and intends to continue doing so”. - pg. 143
Part 4: Red, 31, and Burbridge’s son Arthur venture into the Zone to find the Golden Sphere. Red knows that a ‘meatgrinder’ surrounds the sphere and that one of them must die before reaching it. Red allows Arthur to enter the meatgrinder and is killed. Red planned to ask the sphere to help his daughter but he can’t think of anything to wish for and simply repeats Arthur’s words. When faced with the Zone’s ‘trial by fire’ Red looked into his soul for perhaps the first time in his life and finds that whatever he desires can’t be that bad because he is human.
“I’m an animal, you can see that I’m an animal. I have no words, they haven’t taught me the words; I don’t know how to think, those bastards didn’t let me learn how to think. But if you really are - all powerful, all knowing, all understanding - figure it out! Look into my soul, I know - everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I’ve never sold my soul to anyone! It’s mine, it’s human! Figure out yourself what I want - because I know it can’t be bad!” - pg. 193
ANALYSIS
What was the purpose of the Visit?
The novel’s title comes from a conversation between Dr. Valentine Pillman and Richard Noonan. Pillman describes the Visit as simply a roadside picnic, as if the aliens came one night, camped out, had a picnic, and left. Meanwhile, humans are left wondering what the hell happened.
“Imagine: a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car pulls off the road into the meadow and unloads young men, bottles, picnic baskets, girls, transistor radios, cameras … A fire is lit, tents are pitched, music is played. And in the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that were watching the whole night in horror crawl out of their shelters. And what do they see? An oil spill, a gasoline puddle, old spark plugs and oil filters strewn about … Scattered rags, burnt-out bulbs, someone has dropped a monkey wrench. The wheels have tracked mud from some godforsaken swamp … and, of course, there are the remains of the campfire, apple cores, candy wrappers, tins, bottles, someone’s handkerchief, someone’s penknife, old ragged newspapers, coins, wilted flowers from another meadow …”
“I get it,” said Noonan. “A roadside picnic.”
“Exactly. A picnic by the side of some space road. And you ask me whether they’ll come back…
“What, you mean they never even noticed us?
“Or at least they paid no attention” - pg. 131-132
Dr. Pillman suggests that the most plausible explanation for the Visit is that the aliens left behind objects meant to test humanity, to see if perhaps we can put aside our differences and become part of the intergalactic community. But, Dr. Pillman reminds us, this explanation is too human-centric.
Are we even capable of understanding the intentions, motivations, thoughts and actions of intergalactic visitors to Earth?
Has the Visit changed humanity?
The alien items found in the Zone have inexplicable properties: shriekers emit a powerful scream when deployed; graviconcentrates bend the normal rules of gravity; a perpetual battery which can power a car indefinitely; a Golden Sphere rumored to grant wishes.
The Zone has other effects too: the dead have risen from cemeteries and returned home; Harmont residents who moved away are followed by disaster; mutations occur in the stalkers’ children.
The characters don’t have an explanation for any of it. They have figured out ways to use some of the strange objects but haven’t the slightest idea if they’re using them as intended. The recovered alien artifacts have transformed medicine, agriculture and astronomy and also weaponry too, courtesy of the military industrial complex. Noonan explains that once perpetual batteries were found, organized theft couldn’t be stopped. The International Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures controls access to the area but seems more intent on securing alien technology than studying ‘extraterrestrial cultures’.
“We now know that for humanity as a whole, the Visit has largely passed without a trace. For humanity everything passes without a trace… Humanity as a whole is too stable a system, nothing upsets it” - pg. 128
And so humanity keeps on going right along as it had been before the Visit, more concerned with money rather than knowledge, on survival rather than enlightenment.
Consider recent congressional hearings in the United States which brought forth eyewitness testimony from fighter jet pilots who reported physical craft that operated outside the known laws of physics (see Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). Discussion on these craft centers on the physical realm. What is the technology? Do we have it? How can we understand and use it? The American public has yet to consider the broader implications.
Is it a delusion that we might realize a higher potential? Or are we incapable of accepting the truth that an inescapable fact of human life is struggle for power and resources?
What does the Visit mean?
In the foreword Le Guin considers the ‘question of whether humans beings are or will be able to understand any information we receive from the universe’. Countless books and movies describe first contact with aliens as the result of humanity’s extraordinary mental or physical feats. In Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind humanity communicates with extraterrestrials through music and the help of computers. In Roadside Picnic, there was no contact and humanity is left trying to piece together the puzzle.
“Are there answers to these questions? Who they are, what they wanted, if they’ll come back…”
“To be honest, I’ve never let myself seriously consider it. For me the Visit is first and foremost a unique event that could potentially allow us to skip a few rungs in the ladder of progress. Lke a trip into the future of technology. Say, like Isaac Newton finding a modern microwave emitter in his laboratory.”“…Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At it’s core is a flawed assumption - that an alien race would be psychologically human.”
“Why flawed?”
“Because biologists have already been burned attempting to apply human psychology to animals. Earth animals, I note.”
“Just a second,” said Noonan. Thats totally different. We’re talking about the psychology of intelligent beings.”
“True. And that would be just fine, if we knew what intelligence was.”
“Well, how about the idea that humans, unlike animals, have an overpowering need for knowledge? I’ve read that somewhere.”
“…The issue is that man, at least the average man, can easily overcome this need. In my opinion, the need doesn’t exist at all. There’s a need to understand, but that doesn’t require knowledge. The God hypothesis, for example, allows you to have an unparalleled understanding of absolutely everything while knowing absolutely nothing…Give a man a highly simplified model of the world and interpreter every event on the basis of this simple model. This approach requires no knowledge. A few rote formulas, plus some so-called intuition, some so-called practical acumen and some so-called common sense. ”
“….A man meets an alien. How does each figure out that the other is intelligent?”
“No idea…all I’ve read on the subject reduces to a vicious circle. If they are capable of contact, then they are intelligent. And conversely, if they are intelligent, then they are capable of contact. An in general: if an alien creature has the honor of being psychologically human, then it’s intelligent…Read Vonnegut?” - pg. 131
Dr. Valentine Pillman, the only scientist in the Zone asking real questions, points out that most explanations for the Visit lead to human-centric answers. But what if we simply can’t understand? And, as Le Guin asks, what is understanding? What is intelligence? Are we humans ants on the side of the freeway? Pillman says that we have a need to understand but that need doesn’t require knowledge.
If we know aliens exists and nothing changes, are we intelligent?
CONCLUSIONS
For the people of Harmont, not even the news of the existence of extraterrestrials changes humanity. Everything continues unfolding more or less exactly the way it had been before and probably always will be.
My Lord, what else do we need? What else has to be done to us, so it finally gets through? Is this really not enough? He knew that it wasn’t enough. He knew that billions and billions didn’t know a thing and didn’t want to know and, even if they did find out, would act horrified for ten minutes and immediately forget all about it… - pg. 155
Le Guin posits that at the end of the novel we are faced with a final question: if Red’s ‘trial by fire’ with the alien artifact was a test, how would he know? If so, what is being tested? How would he know if he passed of failed?
How far can our own brains take us? Are we just hairless apes?
This much is true: humans are not the center of the universe.
Let’s start acting like it.
Until next time,
Keith.
Sources
https://reading-lamp.blogspot.com/2017/11/review-roadside-picnic-by-arkady-boris-strugatsky.html
https://skullsinthestars.com/2016/05/11/roadside-picnic-by-arkady-and-boris-strugatsky/
https://escapinginpaper.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/review-roadside-picnic/
